Wow, more responses than I expected! I think some of them highlight a few issues, and I'd like to focus for a bit on them.
Let's start with Bruno and Seriphyn: you both mentioned identity issues, that there's no clear cause for Federal loyalists, and no real answer to the question of what we are. This ties in to other things, like the lack of corporate history and the fragmented nature of the community, but ignoring those things for a moment, I think the key here (and Bruno touched on this really insightfully) is that the default is that there are many answers. I think a good place to start for something universal would be with the Crystal Boulevard chron, 'a love of freedom as hard as diamond'. Clearly, though, formulating an idea of what the Federation is and who we are is going to be an important part of recruiting new players.
Seri, you mentioned shades of grey. I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion. I think more damaging to Federal rp is the extent to which IC opponents have gained control of the narrative, which is again an issue that ties into a lack of long-standing corps and small numbers of characters active. Plenty of shady dealings probably should be going down, the trick is to find a framework that justifies it and makes it sound reasonable. If the
Amarr can do it well enough, we should certainly be able to
Likewise, I think the default enemy is clearly the Caldari, the problem is (as you pointed out) that the seriousness of that threat is sorely understated.
Last, to address Soter and Kaleigh, I agree that there are lots of rp'ers who are off the radar, but my experiences with alts makes me think that's true of every empire faction. The thing we lack is large, established corporations. I don't think the Federation needs, or even really wants, a unified single bloc, but then, not even the Amarr have that. To state the thesis concisely: What factors have made large, stable Federal rp corps fail, and what can we do to remedy this?